DANIEL GREENFIELD: PART TWO OF THE WEEK THAT WAS

New York has the highest cigarette tax rate of any state, and nearly two-thirds of the state’s cigarette market is illegal, announced the think tank Tax Foundation on Thursday.

In New York City the tax rate is even higher, adding another $1.50 per pack to the state rate. It’s not uncommon for smokers to pay $12 for a pack.

Large scale cigarette smuggling networks in New York State are dominated by tight knit nationality-based networks, primarily families through blood or marriage of Lebanese, Yemeni, Jordanian and Palestinian descent.

Federal and New York State law enforcement officials estimate that nearly 60 percent of all convenience retail outlets in New York City are now Arab-owned, and with the Arab networks compartmentalized by ethnicity and family ties, the risk of infiltration by law enforcement is minimal.

In total, law enforcement officials in New York State estimate that well-organized cigarette smuggling networks generate between $200,000 – $300,000 per week. A large percentage of the money is believed to be sent back to the Middle East where it directly or indirectly finances groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda.

In 2009, Obama visited Cairo and in his famous speech praised Al Azhar University as “a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century.”

“It was Islam, at places like Al-Azhar,” Obama said, “that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.”

And nothing says light of civilization… like cannibalism.

“Listen also to what they teach to kids… It says, “We allowed the eating of the flesh of dead humans… under necessary conditions. It [Dead human flesh] must not be cooked or grilled to avoid Haram [wrongdoing]. o he’s allowed to eat him without cooking or grilling. …and he can kill a murtadd (apostate) and eat him.”

This contains not just a call for terrorism against Israelis, but calls on Muslims around the world to support Hamas and “besiege the Zionist wherever they are”. That looks a lot like a call for international terrorism against Jews.

Then there is a call for the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from “Arab or Islamic land.” That means the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of Israel, and of Egypt and every other Muslim country, or every country that Muslims consider their own.

We’re talking about the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Muslim world. I repeat, this is worse than anything Ahmadinejad has said.

This is not about a racist insult. This is about Obama sending F-16s and 200 tanks to a man who makes Ahmadinejad seem moderate.

And the White House’s response to that is, “President Morsi should make clear that he respects people of all faiths, and that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable or productive in a democratic Egypt.”

Senator McCain disapproves of calling Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs”, endorsing Hamas and calling for the destruction of Israel. He just doesn’t disapprove enough to hold up the 480 million dollar bailout of Morsi’s regime.

There are clear lessons from history here. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were initially in very bad economic shape. Germany had huge debts and the USSR faced a major famine. Instead of cutting them off, they were given help.

The United States, at a time when many American children went to bed hungry, launched a massive relief effort in the Soviet Union. The USSR made some concessions and it all looked good. The fruits of that relief effort allowed the Bolsheviks to stay in power and led to the Cold War and the near destruction of all human life on earth.

So by all means. Let’s add 500 million, to the billions form Qatar, the EU and the IMF. What’s the worst that could happen?

Retired Brigadier General Safwat Al-Zayat said, “It is obvious that the finalisation of the deal on 11 December, which happened to be at the height of the mass demonstrations in Tahrir Square against Morsi, conveyed a political message. Between the lines, Washington was sending a message to three parties. The first was to Morsi and it stated, ‘We support you. Move ahead.’ The second was to the army and it said, ‘We are encouraging this man,’ meaning Morsi. The third was to the opposition forces and it said the same thing.”

Of the 11,000 to 12,000 gun murders each year, more than half involve both black killers and black victims, mostly in urban areas and mostly gang-related. The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide…

Rapper/actor Ice T (“Cop Killer”) and I attended the same high school. In the 1991 John Singleton film “Boyz n the Hood,” the teenagers attend that school, and car-cruise the South Central Los Angeles boulevard after which the school is named.

Crenshaw High opened in 1968. By the time Ice-T left, less than a decade later, Crenshaw had become, in the rapper’s words, “a Crip school” — meaning one controlled by that street gang. Because of the school’s reputation for violence, Time Magazine called it “Fort Crenshaw.” A powerhouse in basketball and football, the school lost its accreditation 2005, before getting it back in 2006 on a short-term basis.

In 1970, I was part of the second graduating class in the new school’s history. Some kids, who started with me in the 10th grade, did not finish. But it was the exception rather than the rule. By 2012, only 51 percent of Crenshaw’s students graduated.

But liberals can’t talk about that. What they do instead is “honor MLK’s Legacy” by having a Planned Parenthood drive.

The study, released Dec. 20, also discovered that an American youth was 3.8 times more likely to become the victim of a serious violent crime if he or she lived in a home where the householder was unmarried than if he or she lived with married parents. In 2010, 7.4 out of every 1,000 youth living with married parents became the victims of a serious violent crime. At the same time, 27.8 out of every 1,000 living with an unmarried householder became the victims of a serious violent crime.

If there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try,” Obama said.

Let’s take him at his word.

– While Obama has been working up to an attack on the Second Amendment, his administration gutted post 9/11 restrictions on Saudis traveling to the United States. If there’s even one life that can be saved, those restrictions should be restored.

– Profiling Middle Eastern men in airports. Obama is officially against it, but if it can save even one life, then Obama is obligated to try. It might violate their civil rights, but so do his proposed attacks on the 2nd Amendment.

– Ending illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants have much higher rates of criminal offenses. If even one life can be saved, the border must be secured and illegal aliens must be deported.

Just imagine the horror when a team of scientists discovers a cure for cancer… and it turns out that none of them are Lesbian or Latino. We’ll have to scrap the cancer cure, delete all their work and start all over again to create good role models for the children.

There’s also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party,” Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities.”

Powell also pointed to former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, who was an aggressive surrogate for Mitt Romney, for calling Obama “lazy” after the first debate during the campaign.

GREGORY: You brought up Israel. He referred to a “Jewish lobby,” saying it intimidates a lot of people on Capitol Hill. What kind of thinking does that reflect? Can you understand pro-Israel senators being concerned by that comment?

POWELL: They shouldn’t be that concerned. That term slips out from time to time…

Once upon a time, Hollywood movies were controlled by censors who prevented them from bringing subversive and controversial subject matters into theaters. Thankfully those days are long gone now. Now Hollywood movies are censored by the officials of the Chinese Communist Party. And it’s a censorship that begins at the script stage and affects what you see on the screen.

Co-productions like “Kung Fu Panda 3” draw close monitoring by the censors at every step. Scripts are submitted in advance. Representatives of S.A.R.F.T., according to Mr. Cohen and others, may be present on the set to guard against any deviation. And there is an unofficial expectation that the government’s approved version of the film will be seen both in China and elsewhere

But here’s one cable series that they won’t want to censor.

Briefly sidelined by Sandy, FX’s The Americans started production in New York in December and gets a speedy launch on the network later this month.

“It might be a little different to believe and get used to, but we want you to root for the KGB,” said EP Joel Fields. “They’re going to try to get the Soviets to win the Cold War.”

“If you tried to tell a story like this about al-Qaeda now, it would be impossible; no one would want to hear it,” Fields continued. “I feel even the same could have been said up to 10 years after the cold war ended.”

Does anyone outside Hollywood want to hear it now?

CALIFORNIA UNTER ALLES

In 1970, six years after the end of the baby boom, children made up more than one-third of California’s population. By 2030, they will account for just one-fifth. The state’s birthrate fell to 1.94 children per woman in 2010, below the replacement level of 2.1 children, according to the study. California’s rate is lower than the overall U.S. rate of 2.06 children in 2012, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.

With more than 90% of the state’s children under age 10 born in the state, “the majority of the next generation of workers will have been shaped by California’s health and education systems,” Mr. Myers said.

Today Mahmoud Abbas begins the ninth year of his four-year term, having originally taken office on January 15, 2005, after a quickie election held a few weeks after Yasir Arafat died in the ninth year of his own four-year term. As Daled Amos notes, “it’s nice work if you can get it.”

A conservative country that claims to support smaller government doesn’t elect Barack Obama not once but twice (no matter how awful Romney was). A conservative country doesn’t run up annual $1 trillion deficits and a $16 trillion cumulative debt. A conservative country doesn’t accept ObamaCare as either good policy or a law within the bounds of the Constitution. A conservative country doesn’t build a welfare state that has unfunded liabilities of “$86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP” and growing.

I could go on but you know the rest.

Far from being a bulwark against this out of control spending and growth in federal partner, the GOP has been at best an enabler and at worst a perpetrator.

And I don’t blame the GOP one bit.

Political parties and politicians are about winning elections. In the end the best way to win an election is to give a majority of the people in the electorate what they want. What far too many Americans want (even some conservative Republicans in good standing) is other people’s stuff.

That’s true and it isn’t. Selling a product, any product, isn’t just about meeting demand, it’s about creating it.

Politics is as often about telling people what they want, as it is about doing what they want.

Romney tried the latter approach. Obama tried the former. A year before the election most people thought they wanted a better economy. But the turnout of the people who wanted a few freebies and a crackdown on the evil Republicans won out.

The Democrats are not winning the policy argument. They’re winning the political game.

And let’s not act as if the GOP has done a great or even halfway decent job of communicating what it stands for and what the issues are.